Wednesday, December 05, 2018

La Divina Paglia has an incisive take on the Deep State and the failure of secular humanism, but like most atheists, she is a sucker for spiritualist psychobabble:

The deep state is no myth but a sodden, intertwined mass of bloated, self-replicating bureaucracy that constitutes the real power in Washington and that stubbornly outlasts every administration. As government programs have incrementally multiplied, so has their regulatory apparatus, with its intrusive byzantine minutiae. Recently tagged as a source of anti-Trump conspiracy among embedded Democrats, the deep state is probably equally populated by Republicans and apolitical functionaries of Bartleby the Scrivener blandness. Its spreading sclerotic mass is wasteful, redundant, and ultimately tyrannical.

I have been trying for decades to get my fellow Democrats to realize how unchecked bureaucracy, in government or academe, is inherently authoritarian and illiberal. A persistent characteristic of civilizations in decline throughout history has been their self-strangling by slow, swollen, and stupid bureaucracies. The current atrocity of crippling student debt in the US is a direct product of an unholy alliance between college administrations and federal bureaucrats — a scandal that ballooned over two decades with barely a word of protest from our putative academic leftists, lost in their post-structuralist fantasies. Political correctness was not created by administrators, but it is ever-expanding campus bureaucracies that have constructed and currently enforce the oppressively rule-ridden regime of college life.

In the modern world, so wondrously but perilously interconnected, a principle of periodic reduction of bureaucracy should be built into every social organism. Freedom cannot survive otherwise.... From my perspective as an atheist as well as a career college teacher, secular humanism has been a disastrous failure.

As a longtime Camille Paglia fan, I'm not even remotely surprised to learn that she was impressed by Jordan Peterson. She is a left-libertarian academic who is naturally inclined to assume that anyone who can sling citations around so glibly possesses a brilliant mind. However, I suspect that were she to actually trouble to read his works, check those citations, or spend more time in his company, she would swiftly pick up on his mental illness and aberrational psychosexuality.

48 Comments:

Interesting that in my limited readings on the civil service reforms of the 19th century, everyone rightly derides the corruption inherent in the spoils system, but no one bothered to ask that seemingly oh-so-logical question "Who checks the bureaucrat?"

Jordan Peterson and Camille Paglia having a discussion together in 2017:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-hIVnmUdXM

I'm a long time fan of Paglia's albeit obviously not on board with a lot of what she says, but I've always enjoyed her writings. But I suspect that what we see as dangerous about Peterson she will view as a great positive: here is one striving to bring meaning to a culture that has all but abandoned it.

Check out on YouTube, hidden secrets of money by Mike Maloney. He analyses empires from the past and the current USA and sees the growth of bureaucracy as the killer that strangles and stifles and eventually destroys societies. See also: the Breaking Point by James Dale Davidson.

As for Paglia, I read a,slim little book of hers a few years ago and she mentioned that because men have a penis, when they urinate they can direct the flow. She then made the leap to how this biological function mirrors things like how males have better focus than females, and other things. I was very impressed.

Barbarossa wrote:... no one bothered to ask that seemingly oh-so-logical question "Who checks the bureaucrat?"

In a Northern European, Christian society with a very limited government, there would have been little reason to ask that question. The bureaucrat would have little scope for action, little desire or scope to do harm, and would have been very likely to actually work at his job.

So, a civil service merit system based on hiring competent people do actually do actual jobs would have looked very good, and no one would have suspected that it would turn into a spoils system for affirmative action turds, and a system to extort billions from society, and a system to keep the oligarchs from facing competition from upstart new businesses. To a 19th Century reformer, none of that would have been imaginable.

In Daley's Chicago, anything the city did cost 10 times as much as it should. And it got done, within 20% of 'on time', or someone was sleeping with the fishes.Nowadays, it costs 20 times what it should for the city of Chicago, and it never gets done.

I regard Paglia as a source of original thinking. For that she helps me clarify my opinions. But otherwise I disagree with her overall world view, and thus do not simply accept her opinions as delivered.

The really regrettable thing is that our civil service is unionized. Thanks for nothing JFK. Plus the ability of the union members to lobby for their own employers in elections is asking for problems. I don't think we need to go back to the spoils system, but it should be much easier for the president to fire people. Plus perhaps some limits on the ability of the civil service folk to be active politically.

Johnny wrote:I don't think we need to go back to the spoils system ...

Perhaps spoils system, with a requirement that the political appointees must be able to read and write at a level appropriate to the job, and pass an appropriate training program. Or, maybe we're better off if they really cannot do their jobs, since most of what the bureaucracy does is counter-productive and anti-social.

@6 You're spot on that the notion was unimaginable to them, but does that not speak to the arrogance of the Progressives? "We are the ones we have been waiting for." Where have we heard that before?

However, I would take issue with the notion of limited government in Northern Europe as a guide. In fact, I would say the exact opposite. The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act was signed into law in 1883. That meant the rise of Bismarck's Germany and all its technocratic might was front and center for everyone to see. France was still recovering from both the Second Empire and the horror of the Commune. Doubtful that Victoria's England and its Gladstone-Disraeli-Salisbury rotation was of much interest either.

The old spoils system would at least focus more people's attention on the reality of the extent of governmental meddling in their lives.

@3: "But I suspect that what we see as dangerous about Peterson she will view as a great positive: here is one striving to bring meaning to a culture that has all but abandoned it."

Well said. JBP isn't really offering Meaning to anyone. He's offering balm to ease the frustrated soul and an elixir to soften the bored mind. In doing so, he is distracting young folk from alternatives that might otherwise receive a greater hearing. I keep going back and forth: JBP is trying to thwart a mass movement. JBP is trying to start a mass movement.

Starboard wrote:I thought we were already in a spoils system. Politics to get them in and then forever buracracy to keep them in. Or is this a uniparty mirage?

A few people at the top are political appointees, but most are hired by some type of civil service process.

If you want the people at the top to still be in charge, then it needs to be reasonably easy to fire people. A local cop got in trouble owing to his unwillingness to do low level stuff and some problems with him not doing the paperwork that went with job. Apparently the city gov didn't know the contract he worked under, fired him, and got sued for improper dismissal. I didn't follow how it turned out but the ex cop had a viable lawsuit against the city for around $250,000.

The public at large does not like the idea of people being fired, and making it tough to dismiss is popular. And also a really bad idea. It punishes the productive by forcing them to carry their burden plus the burden of the unproductive.

"The public at large does not like the idea of people being fired, and making it tough to dismiss is popular. And also a really bad idea. It punishes the productive by forcing them to carry their burden plus the burden of the unproductive."

One of the thing that attracted IMMEDIATE support for Trump was what he was best known for at the start of his campaign: "You're FIRED!"

Pagglia appreciates Jordan for having the same views/conclusions as her....like many, she also seems to have projected her own views onto him, and found that she can map the meaning she wants to onto his words. Took me a while to realize this is what I was doing too.

Johnny wrote:The public at large does not like the idea of people being fired, and making it tough to dismiss is popular. And also a really bad idea. It punishes the productive by forcing them to carry their burden plus the burden of the unproductive.I have very mixed feelings on this; on the one hand, it shouldn't take a lot to fire someone... on the other hand, in my field [STEM] it's brutal trying to get a new job, especially for "entry" level. Part of the issue is reflected in the preference for many companies for H1B-hires, in the corporate-world's vehement distaste for training: there's little to no loyalty left from employer to employee, even though the employer demands loyalty from employee.

Dirk Manly wrote:One of the thing that attracted IMMEDIATE support for Trump was what he was best known for at the start of his campaign: "You're FIRED!"The reason I voted for him was he was willing to "punch back" at the journalists and PC-crowd; I just whish he were absolutely vicious in a crusade against corruption, but he's too much a businessman (willing to negotiate) to really dig deep into the corruption. It's both his greatest strength and, IMO, greatest weakness.

"The public at large does not like the idea of people being fired, and making it tough to dismiss is popular. And also a really bad idea. It punishes the productive by forcing them to carry their burden plus the burden of the unproductive."

The God-Emperor should devote some time to identifying his numerous enemies within the bureaucracy (especially the Justice Department, FBI, DOD and CIA) and firing them personally and en masse (not piecemeal but all at once) in a grand executive order that lists them all.

The Supreme Court found the Tenure of Office Act invalid already in the case of Myers vs. the United States and the inevitable lawsuit to reinstate them is likely to be struck down on similar grounds that the President has absolute power to fire any executive branch employeee. It might be that Trump is waiting for Ginsburg to croak so he doesn't have to worry about Roberts pulling another Obamacare.

OneWingedShark wrote:I have very mixed feelings on this; on the one hand, it shouldn't take a lot to fire someone...Most people don't like firing people and due it with reluctance. One of the reasons they will sometimes get a consultant in to streamline a company is that the boss is pushing the job of dismissal off onto somebody else.

I worked for a federal agency for a time. Little budgetary constraint and an irksome dismissal process. One of the more extreme examples of not firing somebody was the guy who only came into work once every two weeks to pick up his paycheck. It went on like that for a couple of months, and then for no apparent reason he quit picking up his paychecks. Bad move I guess because after he let a couple of the checks pile up they fired him.

The best solution is to have more job opportunity so that people of ordinary competence can find a job when they need to. The solution of regimenting the workforce with elaborate rules is an unfortunate one.

23 During the (2017? its at youtube) exchange I heard she and him talked about soft college topics that young people cccare about which is really the boomer-silent gen-spin only the same format different design; push the UN agenda, pedo-trans agenda and wreck up Christmas, typical evil times.

Paglia saw thru JP like Milo and said nothing to very little or was glamoured as well.

Having read 'Sexual Personae', Paglia does tend to fall in love with ideas and archetypes, she's Jungian in that respect. So she might fall for some of JBP's stuff until she actually thinks about it...

Camille has what I call a "manic" intelligence, and the mania aspect of it is particularly female.

In a lower IQ person, such a non-stop mania would be repulsive (I know one woman who talks non-stop, but unlike, Camille, there is absolutely no coherent thinking involved). However, given Camille's lesbianism,I think she has male aspects to her psyche that allows her to formulate coherent thoughts, even as the female manic part is running wild.

When you listen to her talks or read her stuff, your reaction is "Yep she's right about that...and that...and that...but whoa!!!really??...oh, ok right about that next thing..."

Rinse and repeat.

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